Along with your feats and enhancements, skills are a major way to define what your character does in the DDO world. These range from your knowledge about the creatures and world around you to your ability to perform acrobatic or athletic deeds of daring-do; from sneaking around and picking locks to charming your way into a king's good graces, and so on.

Some skills require training to perform certain actions, and all skills benefit from the bonuses given by training

As your character increases in level, they will gain skill points, and they can be spent during the leveling process. The number of points that you get depends on what class you are and the value of your intelligence modifier.

Skills themselves can be either class skills (the list for each class is found on the class page), or cross-class skill (those that aren't on the list). Depending on which class you leveled with, each point spent on a skill will move it a full rank (if it is a class skill), or half rank (if it is cross-class).

Some skills need a full point in them before you can use things that require them. For example, you need at least 1 full point in Tumble before your character can tumble.

There are 21 skills available within DDO. These skills are divided into two types, active and passive. Passive skills do their job without you or your character doing any action. Active skills require you to activate them. You can place an active skill on a hot bar by clicking and dragging from in the Skills tab of the character sheet. Once it is on the hot bar, that is how you activate it.

Below is an alphabetical list of them, and information about each one.

Bluff is an active Charisma skill that is used to bluff certain NPCs, draw monsters away from their group, or make an individual monster vulnerable to a sneak attack for six seconds. You also gain a decrease to threat generation for a short period of time after successfully using this ability.

Concentration is a passive Constitution skill that allows you a chance to continue casting a spell when you would normally be interrupted by taking damage. For characters with ki, concentration allows you to retain more base ki and shows the rate at which your ki dissipates.

To maintain concentration when you take damage, your roll 1d20 and add your concentration skill. The result must equal or exceed 10 + the level of spell you are trying to cast + the incoming damage amount.

Diplomacy is an active Charisma skill that allows your character to negotiate more effectively with certain NPCs and to encourage monsters to find targets other than yourself. Any accumulated threat you have with enemies that you successfully diplomacize is reduced.

Heal is an active Wisdom skill (with some passive benefits) that allows you to use a healing kit to revive unconscious and bleeding companions to 1 hit points.

Passively, grants additional hit points for yourself and your companions when resting in a dungeon, and is used in determining the Positive Energy and Negative Energy base Spell Damage (Healing).

To boost allies' healing from resting, the character with the heal skill must be close to the resting characters (within a few meters). The amount of extra healing granted after a rest is equal to your heal skill + character level + 10.

Each point of Heal grants 1 point of Positive Energy and Negative Energy Spell Power

Intimidate is an active Charisma skill that allows a character to intimidate certain NPCs or taunt and draw the attention of monsters away from other members of your part. You get a bonus when taunting creatures smaller than you and a penalty when taunting creatures that are larger than you. You also gain a bonus to threat generation for a short period of time after successfully using this ability.

The bonus/penalty you gain is 4 for each size category difference between you and your target.

Perform is a passive Charisma skill that allows you to use and improve your musical ability to inspire and fascinate others. Bard songs require you to have a certain number of ranks in this skill. Also improves sonic based spell damage.

Repair is an active Intelligence skill that allows you to use a repair kit to restore disabled construct based characters to 1 hit points. Grants additional hit points while resting in a dungeon for construct based characters. Also improved repair and rust based spell damage.

To boost allied construct based characters healing from resting, the character with the repair skill must be close to the resting characters (within a few meters).

The amount of extra healing granted after a rest is equal to your repair skill + 10

Search is an active Intelligence skill that when activated, allows you to attempt to find the exact location of hidden doors, traps, and other objects. Some traps are so well hidden they can only be found rogues (traps with a Search Difficulty Check (DC) above 20).

Spellcraft is a passive Intelligence skill that improves your spell damage with all spells except for Positive Energy, Negative Energy, Sonic, Repair, and Rust Spells, which are instead affected by the Heal, Perform, and Repair skills.

Each point of Spellcraft grants 1 point of Spell Power with all damage types except for:

Tumble is a passive Dexterity skill that allows you to tumble and roll away from attacking enemies. To tumble, hold down the Shift key and then hit one of the four movement keys. This also reduces the damage you take from falling.

Use Magic Device is a passive Charisma skill that allows you the ability to use magic devices and wear magic items which you normally wouldn't be able to use because of class or race restrictions. You must perform a check each time you attempt to use a magic item with this skill and may succeed sometimes and fail other times with the same item.